


All the Centrefolds

by bericdondarrion



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Canon Compliant, Charly panicking over rafa losing the usual, Covid-19 panic, M/M, Roland Garros 2020, Sickfick, old men being sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26658580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bericdondarrion/pseuds/bericdondarrion
Summary: Carlos wakes up with a fever and it’s up to his Russian boyfriend to keep him company miles away as he waits for the COVID-19 test results. Bizarro Roland Garros anxiety ensues.
Relationships: Carlos Moya/Marat Safin
Kudos: 8





	All the Centrefolds

**Author's Note:**

> Too much to unpack. Really just a way to release some RG2020 anxiety through fic Charly and his Russian boyfriend.

Paris was cold. Beneath the sheets, inside the hotel and with the heat on, it was... okay. The issue, clearly, was once outside, when it was time to practice and they had to go to the ugliest version of Chatrier that Charly had seen in his 25 years of knowing the place. The roof, if you could call it that, didn’t prevent the wind and rain from getting inside and cooling down the place enough to resemble a clay colored freezer.

It was fine when it was Bercy or the ATP Finals, but this wasn’t proper indoors and it was clay and everything was cold and humid. 

So there he was, Rafael Nadal’s coach, waking up at 4 am in the morning, freezing despite the heat of the hotel room and with a pounding headache and -

He sat down so quickly, that the headache aggravated instantly but all of his discomfort became meaningless as he took the inside of his left hand and placed it against his forehead. He knew his body and he had no doubt that he had a fever and Charly sat there in silence, trying not to panic as he came to the obvious conclusion. He had COVID and Rafa would have to withdraw, he would lose a chance at another grand slam, all of his efforts to be there gone to waste. He pictured his players’ face like he had already seen countless times, expressive as only Rafa could be, and he couldn’t abide.

He looked over to his left, the second bed empty but he wanted to make sure, against all logic. They were using two rooms and each night they would flip a coin to see who would get a whole room for himself and lucky for Charly, he won the toss last night so Rafa and Maymo were sharing the room next door.

He tried to calm down, taking a deep breath and deciding that the best was to go to the infirmary and get it over with. He wanted to cry just imagining the POSITIVE result, he wanted to knock on the other room and beg Rafa for forgiveness. 

And what if Rafa already had it too? Knowing the younger mallorcan’s lack of luck he would be everything but asymptomatic and what about his lungs? What were the lasting effects of covid again? Everything he had read about it was merging together and reaching the tournament’s clinic while he tried not to have a panic attack and avoid the few people awake was nothing less than a trial.

They decided to make an emergency test that would only take around 2 hours or so. So as he waited for the inevitable, he took his phone out and absently scrolled down Instagram. He managed to smile as he stopped on  _ flymonkeyrus’ _ latest post. Charly had access to that particular selfie, as he had with all the rest, much earlier than the rest of the world. Every day a new selfie from his boyfriend welcomed him upon waking up, there in his private messages, accompanied by a cheesy line from a pocket poetry book that would make him roll his eyes and feel loved at the same time, brightening his day without fail. At 5 am, said daily photo and message hadn’t arrived yet but right there thinking of all the horrible things that awaited him and Rafa today, of all the issues they had had so far, of how they had been trying to find a solution to the unsolvable, he really needed that message. 

He hesitated but there was an hour to go and he felt more and more anxious with every minute and more vulnerable than he remembered feeling in years. He knew that he couldn’t make it in time without breaking down. So he pressed on Marat’s number and put the phone to his ear.

It only rang twice before the voice on the other side answered, clear as if he hadn’t just been asleep, “Carlos?”, he sounded alarmed indeed and Charly had to bite his bottom lip hard to stop the threatening tears from flowing. 

“What’s wrong?”, Marat asked in Spanish and Charly had to smile to himself, 20 years in the making, but the Russian knew him inside out, 

“Hey”, he managed, “I’m sick, I have a fever”,

“Oh”,

It was hard to stunt Marat Safin silent but he could hear him breathing on the other side of the line, surely trying to focus on the right words. 

“Where are you?”

“Waiting for the test results, it will take them another 50 minutes or so”,

“Okay, how are you feeling?”

“Terrible”, he sighed, he had considered lying because knowing the lack of impulse control from the Russian he could already be buying a plane ticket to Paris but his vulnerability was proving too hard to avoid, “my head is killing me and my throat hurts… I can’t believe this, Rafa will have to withdraw, Marat, if this thing doesn’t kill me I’ll just kill myself”,

“Calm down, stop being so dramatic when you don’t even have the results yet”,

“Oh sure it’s just a co -“, he had to stop himself from raising his voice higher, inevitably, as an ugly look from the night shift nurse and a fit of coughing forced him to do so,

“Are you done?”,

Charly brought his knees to his chest, managing to fit all of his 1.90 meters on the infirmary chair. 

“I wanna go home”, he said sounding as pitiful as ever, he didn’t allow himself to be anything other than optimistic around Rafa, he had to, he let the younger Mallorcan rant and vent and yell and it was his job to calm him down, reinforce his spirits, to just make him feel better somehow and he couldn’t allow himself to be anything less than that but the truth was that it was becoming harder and harder. Everything seemed to be going against them and he was trying to find a solution but how can you make that monstrous ball lighter or the cold be less cold?,

Maybe it was a mercy, now they had an excuse, shameful as it was, instead of enduring this tournament of hell and losing against what’s his name in round 1.

“I’d like you here so I can take care of you, I can’t trust Nadal with that when he can’t even take care of himself”, Charly scoffed and managed to relax a bit, closing his eyes and imagining he was in Montecarlo, warm in the arms of the Russian instead of alone and cold.

“That’s my job”, he sighed. “I’m doing a terrible job these days, I don’t know how to help him”, 

“You can’t do anything about the conditions, all you can do is try to get used to the ball and the court and make him feel confident in his game, and there’s no one better than you at inflating Rafael Nadal’s ego”,

“Confidence”,

“Whatever”,

He smiled faintly, “I guess it doesn’t matter now”, it was getting harder to breathe normally and he was quivering. In his urgency to get to the clinic he forgot to wear a jacket, making things worse now trying not to freeze in his night clothes. 

“You know he’s the best clay court player in history not because the conditions always favored him but because he’s just that good, he just needs someone to remind him”,

Despite the shivers and the sweat running down his forehead and the pain creeping down his sore throat, he felt much more at peace, his boyfriend’s voice soothing his headache and for a self proclaimed madman, his words were making all the sense in the world,

“Yeah”, he whispered,

“You’ll remind him?”

“Yeah”,

“Carlos?”, 

“Yeah?”, 

“I love you”,

“I love you too”, 

The tournament doctor in charge of testing walked into the room, wearing a mask but without the gloves and plastic glasses he was using before. 

_ Espera _ ,

He brought the phone down.

“Good news”, Marat heard in English and a French accent, “it’s negative”, he didn’t hear Charly replying but he could feel him sighing in relief through the line, “just a bad cold due to the change of weather”,

“Are you sure?”

“We’ll make a 24 hour test to be sure, I’ll recommend staying inside the hotel until that is completed but it is unlikely to change the result”,

“Can my player practice?”,

Back in Montecarlo, Marat rolled his eyes,

“Sure”,

“I’ll ask Ferreti”, Charly murmured to himself, already making plans for the day, 

A small arsenal for cold medicine and several instructions from the doctor later and Carlos Moyà was walking back to his room,

“Still there?”, he sounded more like himself once he brought the phone back to his ear,

“Unfortunately”, Marat said faking an exaggerated yawn, “I have a few parties to attend today, you know?”,

“No you don’t”, 

“Listen, I know I can’t stop you from going to practice tomorrow so just promise me you’ll take care of yourself, a cold is a cold and you get very bad ones”, 

“I promise”,

“I’ll ask the tiny one to keep an eye on you”, Charly reached his room, the morning light starting to illuminate it,

“Maymo”, 

“Whatever”, 

He sank into the bed and suspired deeply, “thanks for keeping me company, you are right, there’s no giving up with Rafa”,

Marat hummed, “Just hurry up and get that trophy so you can come home, my dick is lonely”,

“Tell little Marat I say hi”,

“Oh don’t worry you’ve been saying hi to him every night, I have pictures”,

“Okay”, a knock on the door and that was likely Maymo starting the day for the three Spaniards, “I have to go, I’ll call you later”, and _ “te amo, te extraño, cuídate por favor”,  _

He took a deep breath, visualized the practice for today that he would have to ask Ferru to conduct for him and wondered how to tell Rafa that he was sick without giving him a heart attack. 

Another day, they’ll just have to keep fighting. 


End file.
